


Heartbeat, Heartbreak

by ValueVices



Series: Signs of Love [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, During Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Idiots in Love, Love Realization, M/M, Pining, Slow Burn, Social Isolation, asexual/demisexual linhardt??, canon to every route except crimson flower, caspar is dumbass representation, lin bones an oc for like 5 seconds because poor coping mechanisms, linhardt is depressed and bored, sending letters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-13 16:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21000623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ValueVices/pseuds/ValueVices
Summary: During the five years of wartime, Caspar sends letters to Linhardt. Also maybe realizes he's in love.Linhardt, meanwhile, spends five years waiting.





	1. (Love) Letters

It took Caspar a pretty long time to figure it out.

The thing was, it wasn’t like, this thing that happened suddenly. It kind of crept up on him. Or, well, it was more like it was something that was always there, but he hadn’t really noticed it. Or he’d been going out of his way _not_ to notice it.

So, he was really in love with Linhardt. 

Wow. Just thinking it was freaking him out. Okay, okay. He just really liked Linhardt. A lot. More than he probably was supposed to. But he was just so _pretty_, with his long silky hair and long fingers and long eyelashes. Whoops, that was a lot of longs. But he was! And the way he drew out his words was long too, the amused drawl of his voice that made Caspar’s heart jump in a way he thought was probably maybe unhealthy.

He didn’t know when it started. He remembered being a kid, sitting close to Linhardt under a tree at Gronder Field, knees touching and hands brushing, and he’d felt something then, warm and bubbly, a feeling he couldn’t name. He remembered Linhardt’s hand on his face, muttering chiding words under his breath as he healed the bruise there, and Caspar wishing his touch would stay. And he remembered when he’d been told that Linhardt would be attending the Officer’s Academy along with him, and got so excited he broke six training dummies trying to work it off.

Things had been pretty simple back then. Neither him or Linhardt had many friends. Caspar’s family didn’t live in Enbarr like so many other Imperial nobles, and he didn’t really get their fancy manners or care about the trends they were all obsessed with. And Linhardt was just...Linhardt. So it was always just the two of them, and nobody was around to get in between them—and if somebody said something, Caspar would beat them up and Linhardt would sigh and shake his head and heal his scrapes and bruises. 

Everything changed at the Academy. 

For one thing, there were a lot more people. And it was great! Caspar made friends with all sorts of people, and some of them weren’t even nobles. Dorothea, and Raphael, and Ashe, and he even kind of made friends with Ferdinand von Aegir, even though he was still annoying and said his own name too much. 

Linhardt made friends with other people too. He talked to girls a lot. And people with Crests. Especially girls with Crests. And that was fine. It was fine. 

At first everything was new and exciting, and the Professor was there, and they had real fights against real bandits and learned how to fight from real knights, but...

Sometimes he just wished he had Linhardt all to himself again. For totally normal reasons. 

They still were together a lot. Sometimes Linhardt would help him study, or try to, but most of the time Caspar still didn’t get it because Linhardt made everything sound even _more_ complicated, and then Linhardt would get tired of explaining and fall asleep on Caspar’s bed. And Caspar would watch him sleep, how Linhardt’s chest rose and fell, and how peaceful his expression looked. How a lock of hair fell across his face, and Caspar would stare at it, wanting very badly to just reach out and push it back, but somehow it felt like if he did, it would break something that he wouldn’t be able to fix.

They ate meals together often too, and Linhardt would tell him not to eat so fast, don’t talk with your mouth full, did you really just pick that up with your fingers, Caspar? Honestly. But Caspar never listened because he kind of liked it, the way Linhardt’s mouth tugged down at the corners, how he waved his hand to illustrate a point. When he was arguing with Caspar, it meant he was paying attention to him. 

Well, when he thought about it that way, it seemed pretty obvious in retrospect.

But back then, it could never have happened. No matter how much Caspar liked it when Linhardt fell asleep on his shoulder, or how he was the only one who could get Linhardt to come to training even sometimes. 

Linhardt was going to inherit his house. He was a firstborn son, and he had a Crest, and he was going to get married and have kids with Crests and become the Minister of Domestic Affairs, like his father.

There was nothing at all in Caspar’s future, except for what he made of it.

So it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. 

Then the war happened. 

Edelgard rose an army to march on Garreg Mach, and the last time Caspar saw Linhardt before those five long years, it was in the aftermath of battle, when Caspar was slumped against a wall and bleeding from probably more than a dozen places.

“The Imperial army’s coming. The whole of it this time,” Linhardt had said to him, the stress of the battle and the whole of last month making lines on his face that Casper wished he could just reach out and smooth down. It might have been the blood loss talking; even with all the healing magic Linhardt was pouring into him, he could hardly feel anything at all.

“I can take ‘em,” he said.

“No, you can’t,” said Linhardt, voice tight. “If we stay here and surrender, they might let us—“

“’s my father with ‘em?” said Caspar. 

“I don’t know,” said Linhardt. “Possibly. Probably.”

Caspar closed his eyes. The feeling was coming back now, and it was all pain. “He’ll kill me,” he said, and he could feel the weight of that statement hanging over his head, ready to drop when he was just a little more lucid.

“We can convince him,” said Linhardt, and something in his voice made Caspar crack open an eye to see his face. He was frowning, a small, fearful expression that made Caspar think of when they were small and Linhardt had been upset over...over something, he couldn’t even remember what. 

“We should run,” said Caspar, the words slipping out. 

He saw it happen, the way Linhardt’s face closed off, grew cold and distant in the way it did when he was forced to deal with something he didn’t want to. “No,” he said, and Caspar closed his eye again because it hurt to look. 

“I’m going,” he said. 

Linhardt’s healing magic faltered, and for a second Caspar thought that maybe he was out. Then it started up again, and Linhardt said, “Fine.”

There wasn’t anything to say after that, until finally, Linhardt’s magic slowed to a trickle, and he sat back. “That’s all I have left,” he said. 

Caspar still hurt all over, but it felt like he could move, at least. The worst of his wounds were closed, and the gash on his leg was fading to a scar. He tried to get up, fell back with a groan. Linhardt was still looking at him with that cold expression, but after a moment he stood, and helped Caspar up as well.

He didn’t take his hands off Caspar right away. Caspar waited for him to say something. He would have waited forever, if it meant Linhardt would keep touching him. But then he just shook his head, and turned away, and it was the first thing that ever truly broke Caspar’s heart.

“I-I’m going,” he said again, and he wanted it to be more, he wanted to ask Linhardt, would they meet again? He wanted to tell him _be safe_, he wanted to beg him _come with me_. But he couldn’t, and he didn’t, and in the end all he did was turn and run, and keep running. 

Things were rough, after that. Caspar managed to escape the Empire then, but he turned and fought back as soon as he was able, however he could, wherever he could. He traveled from place to place, fighting and fighting and always fighting, and he didn’t have to think of anything much at all outside of that, which suited him just fine. 

But when his wounds ached, and whatever healers on the battlefield had already spent their magic to soothe the dying and the suffering, sometimes he thought about Linhardt. How badly he missed him. If he could have said anything that would have convinced Linhardt to come with him.

Probably not, he thought. Maybe it was better this way. The idea of Linhardt here, in these muddy, bloody, war-torn places, pale and ill from the horrors around them made his heart hurt even more.

The most painful thing of all would be to put a name to the feeling. So he didn’t. He just kept fighting. It was easier that way.

Near the middle of the second year, as Caspar was training the militia of a village in Faergus to make a stand against the Imperial occupation, a traveller passing through told him he knew of a network of Alliance merchants who were willing to smuggle goods into the Empire.

It gave Caspar an idea. An idea that he instantly shoved to the back of his mind, because it was just a stupid, fleeting thought, but...

When he found himself wandering again, his path took him towards Alliance lands. 

It took him a month or two to find the merchants, chasing rumours and whispers until finally, in a border town in Gloucester land, somebody pointed him to a caravan parked at the edge of town.

A woman was leaning against one of the wagons, steel grey hair and steel grey eyes. She eyed Caspar as he approached.

“Uh, hey, I hear you’re....going to the Empire?” he called, trying to settle the nerves in his stomach.

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “What’s it to you?”

He was closer now, and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Do you make deliveries there?” he asked, because, well, it wasn’t like he’d ever smuggled anything in his life except for sweets out from the kitchen. He didn’t know how you were supposed to ask.

The woman raised an eyebrow. “Depends,” she said. “What’re you looking to get delivered?”

Caspar shifted from foot to foot nervously. “Uh,” he said, swallowed, tried again, “A letter.”

The woman’s other eyebrow rose, and she snorted out a laugh. “A letter,” she said, grinning lopsidedly. “Yeah, kid, we can do a letter.”

Relief coursed through him, and after it, an electric thrill of excitement. “Really? You can really do it?”

“Sure,” she said, still looking amused, but Caspar didn’t care. “Who’s it for?”

“It’s for Linhardt,” he blurted out, then felt his face go red, because oh wow. This was really happening. “Von Hevring,” he added.

“Von Hevring? As in, the six noble families von Hevring?” she said, incredulous.

“Y-yeah,” said Caspar, nervous all over again. “Is that a problem?”

She was still looking at him like he was crazy, but after a moment, she shrugged slightly. “We can do it,” she said, “Might be a little more complicated than the usual, but we’ll make it happen.”

“That’s great,” said Caspar, unable to keep from grinning. “That’s so great! Thank you so much!”

“Alright, settle down, kid,” she said. “It’s not gonna be cheap.”

“I’ve got gold,” he said, because he did; people kept on paying him for helping them, even when he tried to refuse, and it wasn’t like he had anywhere to spend it.

“Perfect,” said the woman. “Let’s have this letter, then.”

“Uh,” said Caspar, feeling slightly foolish. “I haven’t written it yet.”

And the woman laughed again, long and loud. “Better get cracking, then,” she said to him. “We’re leaving in the morning.”

“Okay!” said Caspar, mind already racing, trying to figure out what he should say in the letter. “Okay, I’ll bring it, thank you, okay.”

And he ran back to the inn to find a pen and paper. 

Writing the letter to Linhardt was the most difficult thing Caspar had ever had to do in his entire life. Counting the time the Professor had made him write an essay on the chain of command when he abandoned his troops in the middle of a battle in order to attack a group of archers by himself and nearly got himself killed in the process. In his defense, the archers were _really_ annoying.

Linhardt hadn’t been too thrilled about that either, and had refused to help him write the essay. So of course he got a poor mark on it, but the Professor just sighed and shook their head and told him to be more careful in the future.

At least nobody was going to grade him on the letter. Actually, no, that was worse. Linhardt would be reading it, and if it were badly written he’d probably just crumple it up and throw it in the fire and think about how stupid Caspar was, to think that Linhardt would want to hear from him, and—

Okay, no. He couldn’t think about that. He took a deep breath.

_Dear Linhardt_, he wrote at the top of the page, stared at it for several minutes, and then scribbled it out, face heating up. Ugh. No. 

_Hey Linhardt_, he tried again, and yeah, that was more like it. It wasn’t like he was writing a letter to some stuck up noble who cared about Proper Forms of Address, he was writing to _Linhardt_. He should just write the way he talked. 

That decided, it suddenly got a whole lot easier. He wrote and wrote, about what he’d been doing, and was Linhardt well, and what was he up to, and he wished this stupid war would be over, and whatever happened to the Professor anyway, maybe they were still out here. He wrote until his hand cramped up and he had to get a new candle because his burned out as he stayed up into the night, until finally he fell asleep at the desk. 

He woke up to the sound of birdsong and the grey light of dawn, stiff and bleary and confused because why was he sitting at a chair instead of in bed, and _oh_. 

_Oh no_.

He bolted upright, knocking the chair to the floor with a clatter, wild energy surging in his blood as he seized the letter, realized suddenly he’d forgotten to sign it, scrawled his name in the small space left at the bottom of it, rolled it up, then shot out the door.

The caravan came into sight out from the mist, horses hooked to the wagons and people bustling about, loading them. Caspar didn’t slow down, charging towards them, waving the letter and bellowing, “WAIT! HOLD ON! I GOT IT!”

The people loading the wagons stopped what they were doing, looking at him with expressions ranging from confusion to alarm, but this failed to register to Caspar until a tough-looking man drew his sword and Caspar nearly ran straight into it.

“Whoa!” he said, skidding to a stop. 

“Who the hell are—“ the man started, but then the steel grey lady stepped out from behind a wagon and pushed his sword away.

“You made it,” she said to Caspar, amused. “Didn’t think you would.”

“Yeah...I...I made it,” said Caspar, struggling to catch his breath. “Here...” 

She took the letter. “Von Hevring, you said?”

“Linhardt,” said Caspar. “He’s—he’s in line to inherit the house.”

She frowned. “I’d heard a rumour that the Von Hevring’s heir was under house arrest,” she said.

“Huh? Yeah, so?”

The lady rubbed her forehead. “Well, it might be more difficult...they’ll probably be monitoring his mail for anything suspicious. We could always disguise it, though.”

“I didn’t even think of that!” said Caspar. “Uh...” he wracked his brain; who would Linhardt get letters from that wouldn’t look out of place? “Oh, I know, can you make it look like it’s from the Imperial Department of Crestology?”

She blinked a couple of times. “Crestology? Yeah, we could probably put a fake wax seal on it. That could work.” Then she smiled, and clapped a hand on Caspar’s shoulder. “We’ll deliver it. You have my word.”

“Thanks,” said Caspar, grinning in relief. 

He paid her, and the caravan finished packing, and Caspar stood in the street and watched them go until they disappeared into the mist. 

It was done.

His breath caught. He’d just—he’d done it. It had been two years and a lifetime ago since he’d seen Linhardt, but suddenly it felt like just yesterday that they’d been together, on that day at Garreg Mach, when Linhardt had turned away from him and said nothing at all.

It tore open his heart all over again. Maybe Linhardt didn’t want to hear from him at all. Maybe he was happy where he was, and—maybe he was already married.

At the time, he couldn’t describe why that thought twisted in his gut like a jagged-edged knife, why the thought of somebody standing beside Linhardt when he got the letter filled him with a desperate, agonizing loneliness. So he pushed it from his thoughts, locked it up in the corner of his mind with the other Things He Didn’t Think About. Linhardt would be glad to hear from him, because they were friends. Simple as that.

He kept traveling, after that. More traveling, more fighting, more watching as the front lines of the war closed in over Kingdom territory, more stopping bandits from terrorizing villages left vulnerable by the ravages of war. As the Empire’s control spread, more and more the black market for smuggling goods opened up, and Caspar became pretty good at tracking down merchants willing to deliver letters to the capital.

He didn’t write that often. Just every couple of months, just because...it got old, traveling alone. Introducing himself over and over wherever he went. He had to be careful that nobody found out he was originally from the Empire, and, well...Caspar had never been good at being careful.

So he wrote Linhardt about the time he got chased out of an Alliance town because he’d drank too much and let his full name slip; he wrote about the time he ran into Ferdinand von Aegir, who had fled from the Empire with a company of knights and was assisting the war effort much like Caspar (“He still says his name a lot,” he wrote); and he wrote about how he missed the days when everything was peaceful and he could get a decent night’s sleep in a warm soft bed. 

He never, ever wrote, _I miss you_.

He’d come close often. Way too often, almost every time he picked up the pen. But he’d always felt the presence of that invisible, delicate thing between them that he was terrified to break, and he just...wrote something else instead.

Then he almost died.

Caspar had had a lot of brushes with death. More near misses than he could count—that he _would_ count, because keeping track would be stupid. He always survived, and that was the important thing, right?

But there was a pretty big difference between having a stray arrow shoot by your face and being left for dead at the scene of one of the bloodiest battles in the war to date, lying in the dirt and drifting in and out of consciousness, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of corpses.

Everything hurt. He couldn’t feel the individual parts of his body, just a constant, throbbing ache. Nothing seemed to make sense; sometimes he thought he heard things, screams, or weeping, or fighting. Sometime he thought he was back at the Academy, and wondered when he was going to wake up back at the infirmary, Linhardt napping on the next bed over and waking up to give Caspar a look like he was so _terribly inconvenienced_ by Caspar’s injuries. 

Linhardt...

Caspar wished he could see him again. 

That was the thought that stuck with him. The one thing that made sense. 

What did Linhardt look like now? Was he still taller? Did he still make that expression where his face kind of hitched to one side when he was thinking about something too hard?

Did Linhardt miss him?

He didn’t know. Everything hurt. And then, everything was dark.

Much later, he learned that he’d been saved by some children from a nearby village, come to loot the corpses of dead soldiers. Much later, because the village didn’t have much in the way of magic healers, and Caspar spent almost a month drifting in and out of a feverish haze on the brink of death. 

It was a long road back to getting better when you didn’t have magic, it turned out. Four whole months. 

He thought about a lot of things, during that time. Caspar didn’t really like thinking too hard about things; he preferred to take action. Action was easier. Action wasn’t _complicated_. But when he was stuck in bed like that...well, there really wasn’t anything else to do. 

For the first time, he wondered when the war was going to be over. The Empire was gaining ground, having taken over most of the Kingdom’s territory by now, and the Alliance was barely holding itself together. It had already been four years, almost five, since those days at the monastery...

Wait. Five years?

He remembered, with a shock like dropping into cold water, the promise they’d all made back then. Back when the Professor was with them, and it felt like they could take on the world together. If the Professor was still alive...

He had to go back.

Caspar left the village three days later, thanking all the villagers for everything they’d done. He had a lot of training to catch up on before the millennium festival rolled around. And he wrote a letter to Linhardt, too, to tell him he was fine, and that he’d be at Garreg Mach on that day during Ethereal Moon.

_See you there?_ he wrote at the end, and then, after hesitating for a few minutes, he finally wrote the words. 

_I miss you._

And then he wrote, _I love you._

Whoa. Wait. No. 

What?

He didn’t....

Caspar stared at the words he’d just written, heart pounding in his throat, an uncomfortably warm sensation building in his chest and spreading through his body. His hands were shaking, and it took way too much effort to put down the pen. Then he picked it back up again. Put it down. Stared at the words some more.

_Did_ he love Linhardt?

He thought about times during his travels, usually after he’d had some drinks at a tavern somewhere or other, and somebody had gotten a little too close to be just friendly—usually a woman, but once or twice, a man—and he’d laughed, and it felt _good_ to have somebody in his space that he wasn’t trying to kill. The fluttering in his stomach, an electric tingle under his skin as they leaned in, and they were kissing, and their hands slid under his shirt, and—

All he could ever think about was Linhardt’s hands. Smooth, soft white skin without any of Caspar’s callouses or scars, except a little crescent-shaped one at the base of his thumb where he’d once cut it helping Caspar pick up pieces of a plate he’d dropped. How Linhardt’s hands were always slightly cool to the touch, his slender fingers brushing Caspar’s skin as he...

And that was always the moment Caspar shoved away from the other person, who wasn’t Linhardt but some stranger who didn’t even know who he was, stammering apologies and face flaming red.

He’d always attributed it to the drink. He wasn’t in his right mind, so obviously he’d be having weird thoughts. Thoughts like, wow, he really remembered Linhardt’s lips looking ridiculously soft and kissable. He wished he’d tried it when he had the chance. And got him to take his shirt off more. He hadn’t done it often enough. And maybe his pants, too...

OKAY, so maybe it was SUPER obvious. 

Caspar buried his hands in his hair, slumping forward so that his elbows touched the desk he was sitting at, face feeling hot enough to fry eggs on. 

He couldn’t believe this. 

_Him_? In love with _Linhardt?_

It was ridiculous. Impossible. For one...well, _for one_, he hadn’t seen the guy in almost five years. For two...they were best friends! They had been best friends. Once. He didn’t know if they still were, but the though that they might not be twisted his stomach. And for three...it was _Linhardt_. 

He was lazy. He was apathetic. He regularly fell asleep at the dinner table. He was disagreeable, and pessimistic, and was only interested in things as long as he felt like it, and Caspar wanted to see him again so badly it hurt.

Ugh, this was so embarrassing. And what was he supposed to do? He didn’t know how Linhardt felt—he didn’t even know if Linhardt had been getting his letters.

The only thing he knew that Linhardt felt was...

_“We should run.”_

And Linhardt’s answer, like a door slamming shut, _“No.”_

And that, more than anything, was what made Caspar pick up the pen again and scribble over those three little words, blotting them out forever. Linhardt couldn’t know. He was too easily scared off, like an animal afraid of sudden movements. You had to take things slow with Linhardt. If things were going to be taken anywhere with him at all. 

If they weren’t...well, Caspar had loved him for this long without even realizing it, so he could keep loving him from afar, if he had to. 

He shook his head to clear it. Here he was, thinking too much again. All he had to do was send the letter, and wait. 

If Linhardt came, he’d figure out what to do from there. If he didn’t...Caspar didn’t want to imagine that. 

So he sent the letter, just like that, and threw himself back into fighting. Bandits, Imperial patrols, bar fights...wherever and whenever he could, just to get stronger, to get _better_, and because he was damned tired of thinking and feeling and it felt good to punch things.

And then finally, the night arrived.

The path to Garreg Mach from the town at the base of the mountains was steeper than Caspar remembered. It used to be that the monastery was visible even from the bottom, bright with lights from the torches on the outer walls. But the monastery had been abandoned since back then. Now it was just a big ruin sitting on a hill, a tomb for all the happy memories echoing in its walls.

Whoa, since when did he become a poet?

Probably since he was so sick with anticipation his mind was latching onto anything that wasn’t thinking about if Linhardt was coming or not. Every nerve in his body was fizzing and popping like they would if he were in battle, and he clenched and unclenched his hands at his sides, wishing he actually did have something in front of him he could fight.

He was nearly at the summit. It was so close...

Heart pounding, Caspar wondered what he would find there. Old classmates? The professor? He had a feeling like tonight was going to change everything, like he’d been waiting all those five years for right here, right now. And pretty soon, he was going to—

“_Caspar_? Is that you?”

He whirled around, automatically reaching for his weapon at the unexpected voice. A figure was approaching him from off to the side of the road, stopping a safe distance away before the glow of magic filled the air and illuminated a face both familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

“Dorothea?” said Caspar, almost unable to believe it. 

Brown hair falling past her shoulders, green eyes not sparking playfully like they used to, but unmistakably Dorothea’s. Older, and more tired, and sadder, but her. 

She came closer, smiling and shaking her head as she looked him up and down. “Look at you,” she said, something in her voice catching. “Little Caspar, all grown up.”

“Hey,” he said, “I was never _that_ little.”

She laughed, and the sound was different too, steeped in weariness, but close enough to her old self that it was reassuring somehow. “Oh, but you made such a cute little brother. And now you make a big, strong, handsome one.”

Caspar felt the tips of his ears go red. “Cut that out,” he muttered, rubbing the back of his head. “It’s not like you haven’t changed. You look pretty. I mean...you always did, but, uh, now you look prettier? More mature, or something.”

“You might look different, but you’re the same old Caspar,” she said, laughing again. It sounded more cheerful this time. “It’s good to see you. It truly is.”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling back. “You too. Wow. Can you believe it’s really been five years?”

“Hardly,” she said. “It all went so fast...and somehow, here we are. Back where it all began.”

“We promised,” said Caspar. 

“That we did,” said Dorothea. “And two of the players are already here...but will the curtain rise again?” She stared off into the darkness, towards the monastery.

“Are you talking about the others? I mean, somebody’s gotta show up. _We_ did.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Dorothea. “Let’s go, then, shall we?”

They started walking again. It felt weird, walking beside Dorothea. Weird in a good way. He’d forgotten what it was like to just...be around somebody who knew him. He didn’t even realize how lonely he’d been until now. “What have you been doing, this whole time?” he asked her.

“This and that,” she replied, glancing sideways at him. She kept the glow of her magic up, so that it lit the path in front of them. “I helped my old opera company get out of Enbarr, then I spent some time traveling. Recently I even ended up taking care of some orphaned children...what have you been up to?”

“Fighting,” he said, and was surprised by himself, that he could summarize five whole years in just one word.

Dorothea smiled wryly, shaking her head. “I don’t know what else I expected. Lin said—“ she cut herself off suddenly, which was just as well, because Caspar had stopped dead in his tracks.

“Linhardt?” he said weakly. “Did you...have you talked to him?”

Dorothea turned to him, seeming hesitant. “Well...yes. I visited him once, not too long ago.”

Caspar barely realized what he was doing before he’d grabbed Dorothea’s shoulders and was looking into her startled face, her magic light blinking out. He had a thousand questions: was he well? Where was he? What was he doing? “Did he get my letters?” he blurted out instead.

“Caspar, calm down,” said Dorothea. “You’re holding on too tight.”

Caspar let her go, stepping back, palms out in a non-threatening gesture. “Sorry,” he said, but his eyes were still fixed on her, waiting desperately for her answer. 

She sighed, crossing her arms and looking back at him. “He got them,” she said.

Relief crashed over Caspar like an ocean wave, a grin splitting his face. “He did?”

“He told me so, yes,” she said. She looked as though she wanted to say something else, then changed her mind. Caspar was too giddy to care.

“That’s great,” he said. “That’s—I had no idea if he was getting them or not.”

“He never sent a reply?”

“I was never in one place long enough,” said Caspar. “How did he...is he doing okay?” 

“He’s doing fine, Caspar, he’s barely left his estate in all of five years, as far as I know. Edie had him under house arrest, at least in theory,” said Dorothea. She glanced at him sidelong. “I...I think he was worried about you. But you know how he can be.”

“He was worried?” said Caspar, unable to focus beyond those words. Linhardt had gotten the letters. He’d gotten them, so maybe—maybe he really would be—

Dorothea looked at him for a moment, then resumed walking. “You’re really looking forward to seeing him, aren’t you?”

“Yeah!” said Caspar, following her. “I haven’t seen him since...back then. I couldn’t exactly visit the Empire, you know?”

“Edie probably would have had you arrested,” she agreed. “But Caspar, listen. Lin might not be—”

“Aaaaah! S-s-somebody’s there!” somebody squawked, up ahead in the darkness.

“Nonsense, Bernadetta, I don’t—oh. Well, now I see them. Hello? If you’re coming to kill us, kindly make it quick.”

Caspar froze. That voice...

Dorothea had stopped too. “Bern?” she called tremulously into the night.

“Dorothea?” Bernadetta’s voice called back, nervously, and there she was, a small dark shape breaking away from the shadow of a tree. 

Dorothea lit her light again. It illuminated Bernadetta, who covered her eyes and flinched momentarily, and it lit the figure hanging back, thin and taller and and unmistakably Linhardt.

He looked so much different, and so much the same. Caspar’s mind scrambled to take in every detail as Linhardt locked eyes with him—his same droopy eyes, but longer hair; the planes of his face more angular than before, and Caspar was almost as tall as him now—before he found himself springing forward, heart fit to burst with the force of his feelings, and grabbed Linhardt in a full body hug.

“Linhardt,” he said, voice choked with—he didn’t know what. Everything. Linhardt smelled like old books and lavender and _himself_, and he was real and solid and warm and alive in Caspar’s arms.

Linhardt was here. He was here, and older, but still him, and Caspar loved him with all his heart. 

“Caspar,” said Linhardt breathlessly. Then, a moment later, “Caspar, let me go, I can’t breathe.”

“Oh, sorry!” said Caspar, letting go; he’d actually lifted Linhardt’s feet off the ground with the force of his embrace. He stepped back a pace, still not quite able to believe it, that they were together again, sharing the same space.

But they were. And Caspar would fight the entire army of the Adrestian Empire to keep it that way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I finally wrote something from Caspar's POV! His perspective is fun. He's also a lot less prone to introspection, which is....refreshing. 
> 
> Technically this work is a continuation of the other ones in this series, but it's not really necessary to read all of them. But if you have, hi! We're hitting the midway point for this absurdly long journey. 
> 
> I'd love to hear what you think <3


	2. Waiting Game

From the moment he understood what was happening, Linhardt knew: Nothing good could ever come from him being in love with Caspar.  
There must have been a process to it, some invisible steps along the way, because by the time he realized it, it was far too late to stop. He supposed he had only himself to blame. Well, he could always blame Caspar himself. But that seemed unsporting.  
His reasons were twofold:  
First, practically speaking, it was impossible. As much as Linhardt despised it, the truth of the matter was that he stood to inherit house Hevring, and there was no one else to fill that role. He had a Crest, and was expected to pass it on, so marriage, as well, was inevitable. Marriage to a woman. It was frowned upon in polite society to take a lover of the same sex, though not unheard of. It usually led to lots of whispering behind the couple’s backs, perhaps some quiet snubbing. None of this would ever particularly bother Linhardt, but.  
Hypothetically…_very_ hypothetically, he didn't think Caspar could tolerate it. He was proud, not in the foolish empty way of most nobles, but of himself and his own accomplishments. He wasn’t meant to sit quietly by and allow people to spread vicious gossip about himself, and especially about Linhardt.  
Which brought him to his second suite of reasons. The emotional ones. It took him considerably longer to analyze these; years, in fact. Of course, the obvious one came first: he didn’t know if Caspar loved him back. During those days at the Academy, it was something he spent quite a bit of time puzzling over, despite himself. Carefully, he tested it—touching Caspar casually, letting it linger. Lounging in his room, on his bed, deliberately falling asleep there. And even, to his later embarrassment, flirting with the Professor to see if Caspar became jealous. It was all terribly self indulgent of Linhardt, and in the end it was both a relief and a disappointment that Caspar did not seem to return his affections.  
The war came with startling suddenness. Edelgard, the Flame Emperor, turned on them, and her army invaded Garreg Mach. They fought off the first wave, but on their heels was the full military force of the Adrestrian Empire, and Linhardt knew despair.  
Caspar wanted to run. Linhardt didn’t, _couldn’t_. He was afraid. Afraid of what would happen, and afraid of what it would mean for them, together.  
So Caspar ran, and Linhardt stayed, and sometimes he wondered what could have been. If it was the last time he ever would see him, if his last memory of Caspar would be the painfully desperate look on his face, the quaver in his voice when he told Linhardt, _I'm going_.  
It hurt to think about, so Linhardt stopped. He was good at that. Of running away from what hurt him. So he didn’t think about Caspar, he didn't think about the war, and he didn't think about anything except for whatever he felt like researching, and avoiding his father.

Two years later, he received a letter.  
He was at the table for lunch, having slept through breakfast as he so often did. His father sat at the opposite end of the ridiculously large table, the gap separating them an apt metaphor for the emotional distance that existed between them. As usual, his father was reviewing paperwork as he ate. Disgusting, Linhardt thought. Not even stopping his work to enjoy a meal.  
As Linhardt yawned over his cup of tea, his father, without glancing up, said, “There was a letter for you this morning.”  
Linhardt frowned. This was unprecedented. “From who?”  
“The Imperial Department of Crestology, apparently,” said his father, retrieving a rolled up letter, sealed with blue wax, from the pile of papers next to him.  
The seal was unbroken; at least Linhardt’s father had the decency not to read other people’s mail. Linhardt's curiosity was piqued. He rose from his chair to fetch the letter from his father, who handed it to him without even looking at him. Then he went to sit back down, and unsealed the letter. Hmm. The paper was of poor quality, and the letter seemed somewhat battered, as if it had survived a journey to arrive here. He unrolled it.  
_Dear Linhardt,_ it read, and then that was scratched out, and underneath, it said, _Hey, Linhardt!_  
He frowned. He didn’t know anybody at the department of Crestology that would address him with such familiarity. _I know it’s been a really long time since everything happened. Hope you’re doing okay. I haven’t been able to come back to the Empire, but there are some merchants now who have been going between the Empire and everywhere else, so I gave this letter to them. Hope it gets to you okay..._  
Linhardt's pulse began to quicken. This handwriting...no. It wasn’t…it couldn’t be…his eyes skimmed the letter, searching for confirmation. There, at the end: no closing words, just a name, scrawled hastily.  
_Caspar._  
“Who is it from?” said Linhardt's father, snapping him out of his daze. Linhardt felt as though his heartbeat must be audible from across the room, and he wasn’t sure he trusted himself to speak. He took a breath, loosened his hands from where they gripped the edges of the letter.  
”A researcher,” Linhardt lied, quickly. “I wrote a paper they were interested in.”  
His father’s lip curled derisively. “You mean your ‘research’ actually produced useful results?”  
“Somebody thinks so,” said Linhardt.  
“Hmph,” said his father, and thankfully, lost interest.  
“I'll be excusing myself,” said Linhardt, getting up from the table, letter curled safely in his hand. He quickly retreated to his room, sitting on the edge of his bed to read the rest, eyes feverishly roving across the messy handwriting.  
_I've been doing a lot of fighting_, Caspar had wrote. _Wherever I'm needed. Things look pretty rough outside the Empire, especially in the Kingdom. I wish things could go back to how they used to be._  
Linhardt’s fingers traced over the words. How things used to be. Before the war, before Edelgard announced her vow to obliterate the church. And now it seemed as though the battle would never end. No, there would be no going back.  
The letter went on. _Are you still studying Crests? What's it like in the capital? The Empire has been advancing for so long the trade routes are all messed up. I really miss all those amazing meals we'd have all the time at the Academy. Hope you’re eating okay. And don’t forget to eat, if you're still doing that!_  
What a Casparian thing to say. As if Linhardt was the one who was likely to be having trouble getting food. He felt a little twist of guilt at the idea of Caspar roaming the war-torn lands, eating the same piecemeal rations day after day.  
_I've mostly been traveling by myself. Most people fighting out here are doing it for their lands, so they don’t really want to go anywhere. Sometimes I’ve joined up with mercenaries, but I don’t like traveling with them. I’m not here to fight for money, I'm doing it because it's the right thing to do! At first I wasn't sure…Edelgard’s smart, so I thought maybe she had a good reason to start a war. But seeing all the people suffering, especially the common folk, there's no way I can agree with what she's doing. We've got to end this. If we still had the Professor, we could do it. I'm sure of it! But nobody knows what happened to them after that battle at Garreg Mach. I've been listening for rumors this whole time, but I still haven’t heard anything…I won't give up though! If they're out here, I'll find them. So don’t worry, okay? Even if it's just me, I'm going to do it._  
Linhardt was selfishly glad, that Caspar was traveling alone. That he hadn't met anyone who would stand at his side. Selfishly, because he knew it was wrong, because Caspar was terrible at taking care of himself, would throw himself into any danger he chanced upon without somebody to hold him back. Without somebody to chide him afterwards, healing him when he was all bloodied and beaten from the fight.  
Maybe Linhardt should have gone with him.  
_No,_ he told himself immediately, fiercely. It was a thought he'd forbidden to himself. He couldn't have gone with Caspar, and he wouldn't have, so there was no use thinking about it. Besides, it made him sick even thinking about the terrible sights he would surely encounter out there, and the miserable living conditions, and the endless, pointless fighting.  
_You would hate it out here, Linhardt,_ Caspar wrote, as if he'd been reading Linhardt’s thoughts. _I heard you’re under house arrest or something? Stay safe._  
Stay safe. And what did Linhardt have to fear, except the minor inconveniences that plagued his day to day life? Edelgard hadn’t bothered to put him on any sort of trial before placing him under house arrest, and, as demonstrated by his unopened mail, the enforcement of this was laughably lax. Although the letter had been cleverly disguised…  
Caspar couldn’t have engineered this ruse on his own. Which meant he’d probably paid somebody a great deal of money to enact it.  
_I don’t know if I’ll be able to write again...if I can, I’ll try to._  
Caspar.  
That was the end of the letter. Linhardt scanned it again, and then a third time, before he lowered the paper. He was feeling too many things at once. Caspar. Caspar was alive. And—  
_He didn’t hate Linhardt—_  
—He was still as foolish as ever, sending a personal letter into enemy territory; if the letter had been discovered, who knew the kind of trouble it would bring, especially for Linhardt.  
Linhardt lay back on the bed, letting the letter fall to his chest and closing his eyes. Guilt gnawed at his stomach. Elation soared in his heart. Worry, long-buried under days and weeks and months of monotony, swarmed in his thoughts like a nest of disturbed ants.  
He hated this feeling. It _hurt_. And he’d been so careful, over the last two years, to avoid anything of the sort. It seemed like no matter where he was, or no matter how long had passed, Caspar was determined to keep causing Linhardt trouble.  
He wished he could say he wanted him to stop.  
But for now, all he could do was carefully fold the letter and put it in the top drawer of his bedroom table, and try not to dwell on it.  
He was good at that.

There were more letters after that. Not often—he was lucky if he got one in a moon, but never more than three or four passed without him receiving a letter from the ‘Department’. Caspar’s letters were often long, rambling things, where he talked about things that had happened to him, places he’d been, people he’d fought, and interjected with questions about Linhardt’s well-being. Which was foolishness, because Linhardt didn’t have a hope of writing him back; Caspar never seemed to stay in one place long enough.  
It was maddening. Linhardt didn’t even realize how much so until one day as he came to sit at the breakfast table, and his father looked at him.  
“You’ve been having a rather spirited exchange of letters of late, haven’t you?” he said.  
Linhardt frowned. He _had_ lied to his father about returning letters to the Department, to better sustain the ruse, but why was he suddenly interested? “I suppose so,” he said.  
“Hm,” said his father. “Tell me about this researcher who is writing you. Is it a woman?”  
“Perhaps it is,” said Linhardt, without thinking.  
His father smiled smugly, and Linhardt cursed internally as he understood too late the cause for it. “It’s good to see you looking towards your future.”  
“What makes you think that’s the case?” said Linhardt, irritated that once again, they’d gotten on this subject.  
His father was still smiling. “You’ve been getting up early to wait for those letters, haven’t you?” he said.  
And. Well. He was expecting one to come soon...and he’d gotten up to go to breakfast every day this week. “I don’t wish to speak of it,” said Linhardt, because he truly, deeply, didn’t.  
“Very well,” said his father, _still_ smiling. “By the way, one did arrive this morning.”  
Linhardt’s traitor heart jumped. His father wasn’t wrong, after all.

The problem was, he couldn’t stop thinking about Caspar. Remembering the sound of his laugh, his smile; imagining what he looked like now, if he’d gotten any taller, if he’d grown into his face. He couldn’t picture it, frustratingly—he looked in the mirror to see if he could glean insight from how his own face had changed. He supposed he looked older, but couldn’t translate it to how Caspar might look...and besides, examining himself tended to bring on strange bouts of vanity, where he wondered if he looked handsome, and if his was a face Caspar would want to look upon.  
All foolishness. And tiresome. So very tiresome, all this thinking and fretting and wondering, and yet every time a new letter arrived, it began all over again.  
Linhardt had never been particularly interested in the physical aspects of a relationship. It all seemed like a lot of bother, truthfully. Touching. Kissing. _Copulating_. He’d tried a few times to imagine what it would be like to be affectionate with a person he found attractive, but...  
The only person he’d ever truly wanted to touch like that was Caspar. The only person he wanted to touch _him_ like that was Caspar.  
It wasn’t fair. Especially now. How frustrating it was, to be having these urges again, and with no way to satisfy them. It was impossible for him to focus on his research, and he had nothing else to occupy his time.  
He read the letters over and over again, obsessively. He imagined himself fleeing the Empire, into the war-torn lands, and somehow, by chance, meeting Caspar at some inn. And he would have a room with one bed, and he would take Linhardt to it, and Caspar’s rough hands would fumble at Linhardt’s clothing, clumsy in his eagerness, and—  
It was a ridiculous fantasy, he told himself, lying curled up and alone in his too-large bed, with sticky hands and shame pooling in his stomach. And yet, he knew, his mind would conjure it again the next night, and the one after that.  
Things couldn’t go on like this. Linhardt had never felt more wretched in his life. 

It hadn’t been long before he received the first letter from Caspar that Linhardt met the son of the current head of the Ochs family. He was fair to look at—red haired, stout-shouldered, nervous eyes. He was a few years older, Linhardt thought, but he had heard the whispers about him. The same whispers that swirled around himself.  
And Linhardt had seen it, when they met, the man’s eyes sweep him up and down, cheeks tinging faintly pink before he stammered an apology and scuttled away. At the time, he’d been amused.  
Now, he thought, maybe he could use that.  
His own father had a fair amount of dealings with that house, since it was directly adjacent to their territory. And he was always so cloyingly delighted when Linhardt showed even the barest trace of interest in politics. So it wasn’t difficult to arrange things so that he could pay a visit to their neighbors, on the pretense of politics.  
Fritz, was the young man’s name. Linhardt sat across from him in a private drawing room, on a broad couch, drinking wine. He didn’t like to drink often—he had little desire to muddle his thoughts in the way alcohol did. But for this, he welcomed it.  
They talked back and forth—inconsequential things, tedious subjects that bored Linhardt immediately. Fritz could tell, he thought, watching the way he nervously fiddled with his hands, how his gaze darted to and away from Linhardt’s. He saw too, the way Fritz’s eyes caught on Linhardt’s gestures, his face, when he thought Linhardt wasn’t looking. After four glasses of wine, Linhardt found it almost charming.  
He looked a little like Caspar, Linhardt thought. Enough like him. His mannerisms were disappointingly dissimilar, but Linhardt could overlook that.  
“Come here,” he said, gesturing languidly at Fritz.  
“Oh—okay,” said Fritz, surprised, but not protesting, as he slid onto the couch next to Linhardt. He obeyed too easily, thought Linhardt, with a twinge of annoyance. No blustering, no comical over-eagerness. Fritz’s face was slightly red, and he swallowed. “You—you’re very...you look beautiful,” he stammered out.  
Linhardt hummed in vague agreement, studying Fritz’s face intently. Up close, it was harder to find a resemblance, but there, in the roundness of his face, maybe...  
Fritz’s blush deepened. He shifted nervously under Linhardt’s scrutiny, lifting his hand and then putting it back several times, as if he couldn’t make up his mind what to do. How irritating. He could at least have the decency to make the first move. The wine made it easy for Linhardt to ignore the uneasy fluttering in his chest as he leaned in, unsure of what he was doing, but numb enough not to care.  
Luckily, Fritz took over then, shifting his body to close the distance between them. Linhardt closed his eyes as Fritz’s face drew near, suddenly regretting this whole affair. But he didn’t move back, and their lips met, and—  
And strangely, frustratingly, _thankfully_, he didn’t feel much of anything at all. His mouth moved against Fritz’s; the other man’s lips were too soft, Linhardt thought dispassionately. But Fritz must have been enjoying it, because he kissed Linhardt again.  
Linhardt allowed it. It wasn’t unpleasant. His body responded, so he was getting what he wanted.  
So then why couldn’t he feel anything?

When he got back to his own estate, there was a letter waiting for him. Guilt churned within him. Which was utter hogwash, because why should he feel guilty over his actions? He wasn’t betraying Caspar with his dalliances. He _wasn’t_, but he couldn’t even finish reading the letter that day because every cheerfully punctuated sentence was like a stab in his heart.  
He saw Fritz again after that; his father came to think they were friends. Every few weeks or months, he saw him, in between letters. It got easier, even without wine—the kissing, and then touching, but Linhardt was unwilling to let it progress much farther beyond that. Once, after imbibing a rather insensible amount of alcohol, Linhardt took Fritz in his mouth; he’d dreamed before of doing this to Caspar, and he stocked his imagination with Fritz’s moans and gasps, with what Linhardt could do to elicit his little high whines of pleasure.  
He’d felt terrible the next day, not just because he was hungover. But it didn’t stop him from doing it again, four months later, when his body had become hungry enough for stimulation that he stopped caring about the disgust that came after.  
He never had been good at denying himself things.

Time passed like this for a while. Linhardt was able to return to his research, no longer trapped in the miserable cage of his base desires. He saw Fritz sometimes, and continued to receive letters from Caspar.  
Caspar had been fighting near the Empire’s border. Caspar had defended a village from bandits. Caspar had fed a one-eared cat in a ruined town, and it followed him to the next, where a family adopted it.  
_I named him Tabs, because he was a tabby cat. You would’ve loved him, he ate everything._  
Linhardt still thought sometimes about if he’d gone with him. But the thought didn’t rip into his heart like shards of glass anymore. It just produced a dull, throbbing ache.

At the beginning of the fourth year since the war began, something happened. Or, more precisely...nothing happened. By the time four full moons passed, Linhardt was beginning to feel restless.  
Then another moon passed.  
“There haven’t been any of your letters lately,” said his father one morning, at the breakfast table.  
“I hadn’t noticed,” snapped Linhardt.  
“A pity,” said his father, as he resumed studying his document.  
A pity. That was all.  
It had never been this long between letters. He’d received them regularly for two years, and now, suddenly, nothing. It wore at him, the anticipation, the desperate hope of waiting, until he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t focus, couldn’t distract himself. He wasn’t hungry, and he locked himself away in his room so that nobody could bother him. He read and re-read the last letter he’d received, hoping to glean some clue, _anything_ that could tell him what had become of Caspar.  
The first day of the sixth moon was the day he gave up hope.  
Caspar was dead. He must be. It had only been a matter of time, really. He was so careless, so reckless. It was a miracle he’d even survived as long as he had.  
Linhardt didn’t feel anything at all. Just numbness. Curled on his side in his bed, not feeling the weight of the blankets on him, no longer sure how the parts of his body connected to each other. Nothing, nothing, nothing.  
He didn’t know how much time passed like this. It might have been hours, it could have been days. Servants came to knock at his door, and then his father did, and once even Fritz, calling nervously through the door. He didn’t answer any of them.  
Caspar’s smile was gone from the world. Forever.  
Did anything else even matter? Had it ever? He couldn’t think. He didn’t want to. It hurt too much.  
So he did nothing, thought of nothing, felt nothing.  
Nothing at all.

Somebody knocked on Linhardt’s door, again. He didn’t care.  
“Linhardt, it’s your father,” came the voice, muffled through the door. Linhardt didn’t move. He must be here for another lecture. Or maybe pleading, this time. It didn’t matter. There was a brief pause, and then his father said, “There’s a letter come for you.”  
The world suddenly snapped into focus. Linhardt levered himself into sitting, ignoring the weakness in his arms. “From who?” he said, voice raspy from thirst and disuse. But it wasn’t loud enough. He got up and stumbled towards the door, nearly tripping over his feet in his haste to unlock it. “From _who?_” he demanded, cracking open the door just the barest sliver.  
His father’s face, visible through the small gap, looked somehow older and more tired than Linhardt remembered. “From your friend at the Department,” he said, brandishing a letter sealed with the telltale blue.  
Linhardt’s hand darted out for it, grabbed it, and shut the door again. A letter. News. That meant—it could only mean—feverishly he clawed at the seal, breaking it open, and unrolling the letter.  
It was in his handwriting. The scratchy, barely legible scrawl that was unmistakably Caspar’s.  
Relief crashed into Linhardt so hard it dropped him to his knees.  
Caspar was alive.  
He was _alive_.  
Linhardt’s face felt wet. It took him much too long to realize he was crying. He hadn’t cried since...he couldn’t remember. He hadn’t cried when his mother died. Why was he so tormented by _these_ feelings? It hurt. It hurt, and he despised it, that Caspar had this power over him.  
He didn’t read the letter. How could he have let it go on this long? He was so stupid to have put himself in this position. To allow himself to be hurt like this, and for what? His unrequited feelings?  
Not anymore, he vowed to himself, wiping his face. He wouldn’t be hurt again.  
He put the letter in a drawer with the rest, and closed it, along with his heart.

Things were normal again, after that. Boring, but boring was good. Linhardt liked boring. He was eating again, napping again, and researching whatever and whenever he felt like it. He stopped seeing Fritz, and after a month or two, he stopped coming by. The most effort Linhardt put into anything was avoiding his father.  
Things were simple. Simple, and painless. Once or twice he dreamed of Caspar—useless dreams, _annoying_ dreams, serving only to put him back on the path to hurt. He banished them from his mind.  
And then, in the middle of Red Wolf Moon, something else unexpected happened.  
Linhardt had a visitor.  
He wasn’t sure to expect; the servant who had come to fetch him didn’t give a name, she just said it was a woman. A woman? Come to visit him? He couldn’t think of who it could possibly—  
When he entered the sitting room, there she was, sitting with a cup of tea steaming faintly in front of her.  
“Dorothea,” he said. “You look as beautiful as ever. Maybe even more.”  
She looked at him, and there: green eyes, cool and glittering with mischief all at once, thick brown hair tumbling down over her shoulders, extravagant earrings dangling from her ears. “Lin,” she greeted him, smiling, “_You_ look like you haven’t changed a bit.”  
“Why try to improve on what works?” said Linhardt, coming over to sit across from her. “Besides, change takes effort, and I’m sure you’re aware of how little appeal that holds for me.”  
Dorothea laughed. “It’s a little relieving, actually,” she said, expression turning wistful as she cupped her hands around her teacup. “Everything seems to be changing these days...”  
“If by ‘changing’, you mean ‘steadily worsening’, then yes, I would have to agree.”  
“You really haven’t changed,” said Dorothea wryly. “I could always count on your to put a negative spin on things.”  
“I would hate to disappoint,” said Linhardt, pouring himself some tea. “Now, I am curious: what are you doing here? I would have thought our lovely Emperor Edelgard would disapprove of such social visits.”  
“Edie doesn’t care,” replied Dorothea, gazing off to the side. “She’s got better things to do than to keep tabs on a former opera star...and no offence, Lin, I can’t imagine she’s concerned about you.”  
“None taken,” said Linhardt. He remembered well the day Edelgard had marched on Garreg Mach, how she’d gathered those of the Empire and asked them to surrender or pledge to her cause. Dorothea had chosen to surrender, like Linhardt. “I suppose politeness dictates that I ask what you’ve been up to these past years,” he said.  
Dorothea took a sip of her tea, looking thoughtful. “What I’ve been up to...now that’s a question. I was able to help everybody from the opera house leave the capital. It’s been so difficult to get in and out of the Empire lately, though. I wish I could do something to help end this awful war, but I can’t—I won’t help Edie with what she’s doing.”  
“It’s been nearly five years,” said Linhardt, “And no end in sight. If there were a person capable of ending it, I wish they would hurry up and appear.”  
Dorothea’s eyes sparkled. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about, Lin. It’ll be five years. You remember that promise we made, don’t you?”  
Linhardt frowned. “A promise? I generally refrain from making those lightly.”  
“You really don’t remember? During that year at the Academy...we all promised we’d meet back there for the Millennium Festival, five years later. And the Professor promised too. If they’re still out there...if they’re still _alive_...they’ll be there. They have to be. And if there’s anybody who can stop this war, it’s them.”  
Oh. Now Linhardt remembered. “Nonsense,” he said. “If the Professor were still alive, why haven’t they shown themselves since then?”  
“Well,” said Dorothea, cheeks slightly red. “They could be! And even if they aren’t, I still made a promise, and I intend to keep it.”  
Linhardt had to admit, it was a tempting thought. He hated fighting; it was all a lot of pointless bloodshed in the end, more often than not. But he’d never minded terribly fighting under the Professor, because he trusted they would lead him well.  
And he remembered that promise. All of their class, standing with the Professor under the Ethereal Moon, back when it felt like they could do anything together.  
It was all just wishful thinking, now. A group of silly children who knew nothing of the war that was to come.  
“I won’t go,” said Linhardt. “What’s the point in it? It won’t change anything.”  
Dorothea scowled. “That’s your choice, then, Lin. I don’t think it’ll just be me who’s going. I ran into Ferdie some time ago—he said he’d be there too.”  
“Oh, Ferdinand. Caspar mentioned he’d run into him too,” Linhardt said, without thinking.  
“Caspar?” Dorothea looked surprised. “You’ve talked to him? I thought rebelled against the Empire.”  
“Yes,” Linhardt said, beginning to pick at a stray thread on his sleeve. “He’s been sending me letters for years.”  
“How did he ever manage that?” said Dorothea. “I wouldn’t think Edie would allow it.”  
“Mm. Yes. He found a way, apparently,” said Linhardt. “They were disguised.”  
“Well, what has he been doing?” Dorothea asked, leaning forward. She had always had a fondness for Caspar, Linhardt thought, suddenly annoyed. “Is he well?”  
“I suppose so. He’s been fighting, mostly. I wouldn’t know,” said Linhardt, adopting a detached tone.  
“Why wouldn’t you?” she said.  
“He only sent me one this year. I haven’t read it.”  
Dorothea frowned. “You haven’t read it.”  
Linhardt shrugged, avoiding her gaze. “It seemed like too much trouble. It’s not worth the bother.”  
“It’s not worth it?” said Dorothea, voice like a blade. “Lin, are you telling me that Caspar has been sending you letters from outside the Empire, probably at a great risk to himself if the letters were discovered, and you haven’t even the decency to _read_ them?”  
Linhardt stared down at the table, sullenly. “I never asked him to send them,” he muttered.  
He started slightly as there was a loud _bang!_ and the clatter of china as Dorothea slammed her hands down on the table. She stood up. “You’re a coward, Linhardt,” she said coldly. “You won’t even leave your own little world for the people who care about you, will you? I always thought you were different from the other nobles. But I was wrong. You’re worse. You’re _selfish_.”  
“I never claimed not to be,” he said, still unable to meet her gaze. But he saw the movement out of the corner of his eye when she shook her head in disgust.  
“I’m going,” she said. “Good-bye, Lin.”  
He didn’t reply. Then she was gone.  
_I’m going._  
The same words Caspar had said to him, that day so long ago.  
He always chose to stay behind. So why was it so painful when others let him?  
Linhardt tried to go back to his studies, after Dorothea’s visit. He sat in the library for hours, pulling down piles of books from the shelves, but frustratingly, nothing could hold his interest. He couldn’t even sleep properly. Something was gnawing at him. He ignored it for a week in the stubborn hope that it would simply go away, but the feeling persisted.  
And it drew his eyes towards the drawer in which he’d sealed away Caspar’s letters.  
He shouldn’t read it. He’d already _decided_ he wouldn’t read it. But. He wanted to.  
“Just a peek...” he muttered to himself, reaching for the drawer handle. If it would assuage this miserable feeling, he might as well.  
He pulled out the letter, smoothing it out as he held it in his lap. It looked much the same as Caspar’s other letters; rough paper, poor penmanship, the words and letters all crammed together messily across the page. Linhardt couldn’t help but feel a swell of affection in his chest, a quickening in his pulse. He was being foolish, he knew. But still.  
_Hey, Linhardt,_ read the letter. Still Caspar’s greeting of choice.  
_Sorry I haven’t written in a while. I got into a pretty bad fight, and it was touch and go for a while. Really makes me miss your healing magic. Some villagers took me in and helped me out...I don’t know if I would have made it without them. It took forever, but I’m okay now! Back and better than ever. When I was lying around in bed, though, I was thinking about a lot of things...the war’s been going on for so long now, and I don’t think anybody’s winning. But so many people are suffering because of it. This needs to end! I never thought I’d get tired of fighting, you know? But it just seems really pointless, the way things are going. I want to fight FOR something. And I want to win._  
I remembered something a while ago. You know that promise we made, back at the Academy? Well, it’s going to be five years in Ethereal Moon this year. I don’t know if anybody else is going to show up, but I’m going. I just have a feeling, like this could really turn things around. Like the Professor is going to show up, just like they promised. And then we’re gonna get out there and put an end to this thing once and for all!  
So, I guess what I’m saying is, see you there?  
I miss you.  
A lump rose in Linhardt’s throat, and his hands trembled as he held the letter. _I miss you._ He could imagine Caspar’s face as he wrote this, brow scrunched together in concentration, earnestly scribbling out the words. He’d written something else next to it, and blotted it out, as if he wasn’t sure what he should add. He was so impossibly, inexorably, _ineffably_ dear to Linhardt’s heart, this ridiculous man whom he still loved despite his best efforts, despite all reason and sense.  
Was reading the letter a mistake? He didn’t know. Perhaps it was, and one he would bitterly lament, someday.  
But if, somehow, if on that night of the Ethereal Moon..._if_ the Professor re-appeared from the void, _if_ they were re-united, and could put an end to this pointless, bloody war...if he could take part in that, at Caspar’s side...  
Perhaps, some hopes were worth gambling on.  
Linhardt planned his escape from his household carefully, so as not to arouse suspicion. He packed only a small bag, most of which was occupied by his most important books, some clothes, and other essential items. He stole food away from the kitchens; this was easy enough, as everybody in his house had learned after a certain point not to bother questioning his actions.  
He briefly considered leaving a letter for his father, but decided against it. He did, however, leave one for Fritz. Linhardt had treated him terribly, he thought now, thinking guiltily back on his actions.  
And on the first night of Ethereal Moon, Linhardt departed from his territory, alone except for his meagre possessions, the hope in his heart, and a sizable amount of gold that he’d stolen from his family’s coffers.  
It was probably foolish, what he was doing. But, well...  
Caspar had always driven Linhardt to do foolish things, hadn’t he?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is brought to you by my experiences with being asexual, depressed, and jobless. You'd be surprised how quickly you start to go crazy; five years is an awful lot of time to be doing nothing!
> 
> Hello again and thanks for reading :3


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